The Long Game

The Compounding Problem

Here’s what nobody tells you about marketing: most of the results come after most people quit.

The path doesn’t stop just because you can’t see the end.

The first email newsletter you send will get 12 opens. The second will get 14. The tenth will get 30. And somewhere around issue 40, someone will forward it to a friend and say “you need to read this.” That’s when it starts.

But most people quit at issue 5.

Compound Interest for Attention

Warren Buffett didn’t become a billionaire because he was the best stock picker. He became a billionaire because he started at 11 and never stopped. The returns compound.

Marketing works the same way:

• Month 1: You’re talking to yourself
• Month 6: A small group notices
• Month 12: People start sharing your stuff
• Month 24: Inbound leads appear out of nowhere
• Month 36: Competitors wonder what your “secret” is

There is no secret. There’s just time and consistency.

“The market rewards patience in a way that feels deeply unfair to everyone who just started.”

The Quitting Curve

Every channel, every strategy, every brand follows the same pattern:

1. Excitement — “This is going to be amazing”
2. Reality — “This is harder than I thought”
3. The Dip — “Is this even working?”
4. Doubt — “Maybe I should try something else”
5. Breakthrough — Most people never get here

The breakthrough is on the other side of the dip. Always.

" The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. The people who are the best in the world got through the Dip. "

The businesses that dominate their market aren’t smarter. They just lasted longer than everyone else.

Why Short-Term Thinking Is So Expensive

Every time you chase a trend, you pay a tax:

1. Learning cost — figuring out the new platform or tactic
2. Switching cost — abandoning what you were building
3. Trust cost — your audience sees you chasing, not leading

Time is the one resource you can’t optimize your way around.

The 5-Year Content Audit

Most businesses plan content quarterly. The ones that win plan it in years. Here’s a framework for thinking long.

Step 1: The Evergreen Test

Look at every piece of content you’ve created in the last year. Ask one question:

“Will this still be useful in 3 years?”

If yes, it’s evergreen. If no, it’s ephemeral. You want at least 70% evergreen.

Step 2: The Compound Content Map

COMPOUND CONTENT MAP
====================

Pillar Topic: _______________
(One thing you want to be known for)

Year 1: Foundation
  → 12 blog posts / newsletter issues
  → 1 definitive guide
  → Build an email list

Year 2: Authority
  → Guest posts referencing your work
  → Speaking / podcast appearances
  → Others start citing you

Year 3: Compounding
  → Inbound leads from old content
  → Search rankings stabilize
  → Word of mouth accelerates

Step 3: The Patience Metric

Track one number: Returning visitors. Not pageviews. Not followers. How many people come back? That’s the only number that compounds.

The best dashboard has one metric. Everything else is a distraction.

Seedtime and Harvest

There is a rhythm built into creation that we keep trying to hack our way around.

Notice the structure: there’s a seedtime, and there’s a harvest. They are not the same time.

We live in a culture that wants to plant on Monday and harvest on Tuesday. But that’s not how seeds work. That’s not how anything real works.

The Farmer’s Faith

A farmer plants and then waits. Not passively — he waters, he tends, he protects. But he doesn’t dig up the seed every morning to check if it’s growing.

The harvest belongs to God. The planting belongs to you.

How much of our anxiety comes from trying to control the harvest instead of being faithful in the planting?

“The seed is the word of God.”

— Luke 8:11

Some seed falls on rocky ground. Some gets choked by thorns. Some produces thirty, sixty, a hundredfold. The sower’s job isn’t to guarantee the outcome. It’s to keep sowing.

The Temptation of Instant Fruit

Every shortcut in business has a spiritual equivalent. The desire for instant results is the desire to skip the process God designed.

But the process isn’t punishment. The waiting isn’t wasted. The season between planting and harvest is where you grow — not just the seed.

Resources for Playing the Long Game

Further Reading

• Lindy Effect (Wikipedia) → — The longer something has survived, the longer it’s likely to survive
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant → — Patience, leverage, and long-term thinking distilled
• Slow Productivity by Cal Newport → — Doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, obsessing over quality